About the same time, power supply to the sensitive radar installation at MES in Aya Nagar was disrupted. The fault, which would have otherwise taken half-an-hour to be rectified, took more than two hours as the technical staff of DVB refused to attend complaints as part of their three-day old agitation. And at the same time, irate residents of Najafgarh were storming the local Delhi Jal Board office, demanding water tankers for their area.

The Chief Minister neither spared a thought, nor a minute from his busy schedule for the basic problems of Delhiites, for which he has put his job on the line. On the first day after his interview to a private channel, where he publicly promised to quit his post if the Capital's power, water and the law and order situation did not improve, he did not take a single step to mitigate the resident's sufferings.

The Chief Minister spent the day attending five official meetings and one press conference. The meetings began at 11 am to end only at 6 pm. After that he was out on an ``undisclosed programme'' which lasted till late into the night. In effect, excluding lunch and the two-hour public meeting in the morning from 8 to 10 am, he spent about five hours closeted in meetings with bureaucrats.

According to the officials present in the Chief Minister's office today, the CM did not make any call to anyone in either the Delhi Vidyut Board or Delhi Jal Board.

When the Chief Minister at 4.45 pm announced at a press conference that the plan outlay for Delhi had increased by more than 15 per cent, he, ostensibly, had no idea about the worsening situation of power and water in the city. He just grumbled that he was expecting a greater increase in the Plan outlay.

After stating a few salient points of the Plan, which, he hoped, would hog the limelight, he patted his Finance Minister Jagdish Mukhi and left what was essentially Mukhi's press conference. On his way home from the press conference, the chief minister unsighted by the tinted glasses in his air-conditioned car, may have failed to notice that irate residents of Aram Bagh in Panchkuian Road were ransacking the local DVB office. They had been facing unscheduled power cuts averaging six-eight hours everyday for the last three days.

The number of complaints about power breakdowns showed an increase today. The problem was accentuated by the fact that the DESU Sub-Station Technical Staff Association has been on a `work-to-rule' agitation for the last three days consecutively.

As a consequence, there was no one to take down the complaints and instruct the linemen or breakdown vans to rectify these faults in the 49 complaint centres out of the total 150 complaint centres in the Capital.